thorns on our side {sarpedons} day o n e

[D6f Carmen Cantelou [aza]]

My ears ring with the sound of white noise. Kingdoms are falling and it's too loud for me to hear. This destruction is what I find solace in. It's all I've ever known and all I've ever come to love; this addictive trait is the cataclysmic aftermath which comes with it. Sorrow and pain--Stella's death introduced me to the emotions and I became an addict.

And then Sylvia showed me the damage it could do.

And fuck, I swear that I can hear Sylvia's voice between my ears. It's hitting me over and over with her words of hate but she doesn't realise I am immune, and have been immune for a long time. Fires burn in my surroundings and I find myself staring at the beauty of it all; bright like a beacon in each of us but some of them are set to be extinguished.

No fuel will be able to save them, for diamond strikes are too strong when it emotion battles blades.

I feel the sickness in my head and I am caught between the polar opposites: not an angel, not a devil. In a war, however, there is no neutrality or middle ground. Territories are guarded by those who bleed with passion and pride and those who parade around wearing a face just like mine.

They are not the enemy, but the fallen of my district whisper into my ear and scream that they are. And that's when I know that I have to do this—I have to cause the havoc they couldn't and push myself into the thick of it all.

A cannon booms, filling the sky like how my rage floods through every inch of my fibres. I've never felt more alive with this adrenaline, and though I've lost Sacha in the blur that followed my flee, there is a security found in wielding a weapon and knowing that killing is an option.

And killing—if I see that bitch from Four who broke my fucking arm, I'm going to do just that. The cannon that boomed whilst I was lost in the devastation could've been signalling her death, and if not, then I pledge that the next one will be.

Ryan Summit is a child of the bad revolution; Ryan Summit did not come to play.

Shallow breaths and arrhythmia tries to strike. I won't let it, not now because I have to find Sacha. I trek on; there's no direction guiding me and so I walk empty paths of the falling. A broken internal compass—I refuse to feel lost in the bloodbath's aftermath.

Where there is a Ryanna Summit, there is a way.

Ripred and I don't get along but fuck, I swear to him that I've been walking for eternity. The same old journeys from side to side; my mind goes back and forth with the roads that seem to wind. I glance behind me and there's nothing—no footsteps or the whistle of the wind or the heavy breaths of dangerous human life.

It's silence, and it roars.

But all of a sudden, there is a movement. Life—and in the blink of an eye, it fades.

For a moment, I just stare at the two bodies which bend to break on the ground. My eyes do not flutter away from the scene, nor they fill with sadness and anger. There's a swelling feeling of nothingness and emptiness and I can't compare it to how I felt when Stella died.

That pain was addicting and bitter.

In these deaths, there is a release. And it's sweet for Two and Eight.

But there's no business for a girl like me here. I feel the weight of Seven's past and future on my shoulders and I realise that I am the root of the problem. My death would, once again, symbolise trial and error. Another failed attempt at carrying the hopes and dreams would crash and burn, and I can't let it happen.

From Stella to Heather to Eryn to Iris; they suffered moving mountains and mountains of pure pressure. It threatened to tear them apart and set fire to the inside of their stomachs. And then it happened and Seven was helpless.

The sisters of Seven were ripped, and we saw the disgusting truth.

"Oh, thank fuck." There's Sacha, and the chaos reaches a calm and I fall into a state of grace.

"Aren't you a sight for sore eyes? I thought I lost you." I have been beautifully, brutally broken but I know that forging courage is the only way to pick up the pieces without cutting my hands. I've lost before and became addicted to the sorrow which followed,

but now, I have nothing. I am starved.

"My arm is broken. Good thing I have another to kill with, right?" I laugh for a second, and it's not appropriate because Sacha is hurting more than I am. 

Soon he'll get tired of it like I did—we all get tired of waiting and assuming and hoping that promises will be kept, saying sorry and feeling hurt. 

You get tired, you lose hope and you let go.

That's how I'm Ryan Summit, that's how I can carry Seven on my shoulders and not care.

coding : elegant

[lucius branwen / 10 — fox]

He gave you Pegasus.
Not heroes, or mortals, or science.

But something born from sea foam and blood, a myth cut from the blade of a legend, spilling like violent oceans from the severed throat of a beast. His father, the sea – his mother, a monster.

Beautiful things are hard to come by in District Five – at all the places where sun did not touch and things could not grow. The light was caught and dispersed in the smoke, the prismatic pools of oil slicks on pavements, pollution budding – and forgot to find you lost in the chaos of winter. He gave you some kind of spring, a perfect and magnificent thing lined in the stars at night.

And here, at the log cabin, there is blood and there is water, there are split skulls and bodiless limbs, there are tragedies and heroes. But you cannot imagine flowers blooming underneath your steps as you run.

Sailors used to use the compasses in the sky. Circinus and Pyxis, and Polaris and Octans, star maps that lit up the roads of the ocean floor. They were for the great explorers of long ago, for wanderers searching for something essential. For people with paths to find, to follow.

(They were never for you to use.)

She disappeared.

You are lost.

The ground bleeds below you as you move. Your pulse beats to the tide of colour, rushing as the earth darkens, feet catching in the clouds of red dust.

There is nothing but a promise you can uphold, the weight of the words he used pushing your feet into the ground. He is, somehow, the proof that you are still here, the way you can quantify your existence. There is not a scratch laid upon old injuries, but you find the stitching of primordial wounds coming undone as you pick at them – pare away skin to look for Polaris.

"Oh, thank fuck."

She is there,

finds you sitting with clay crumbling between your fingers at her voice. You push yourself upwards and take an unsteady step towards the Ryan, the bundle of knives perched on your lap falling to the ground. She is more familiar, less safe. But you’ve never really been that cautious in the first place.

There’s a lot of things you don’t know about Ryan Summit.

Just a name shared like castoff clothes, a moonbeam peach kiss, accidental ally –

you know nothing but your reaction to her words, a flinch at the sullen laugh and your chest recoiling against the misplaced sound. District Five is too far away from District Seven, and you will never know the streets she had walked, the pieces of herself that she had left back home. The years before this landscape.

You only know the parts left in the arena, the scraps of televised tapes, pixel stories from growing up watching Summits rise to their name.

You only know that her arm is bent all wrong. And you take off your sweater, shimmy out from the knitted gray. The makeshift sling would be bulky and bad, but this is all you’ve got to give. Because you aren’t sure anymore if Seve is enough to trust in. Because you have nothing else but the two things that separate you from dead men, and she is here right now.

“D-don’t kill anyone today, okay?” You knot the sleeves around her neck, and try to keep from trembling. “Don’t hurt your arm any more.”

S   A   C   H   A
I keep throwing it down
two-hundred at a time

[D6f Carmen Cantelou [aza]]

There's a new rage that flows. It's thicker and runs deeper than a river in a canyon, and it feels sour as it pulsates through my body. It isn't adrenaline or a high from addiction—it's something worse that erases the line drawn to divide me from the saints.

Withdrawal. I am made to stand face to face with my harsh reality; I am an alcoholic and these games are just another bottle. Helplessly, hopelessly trying to replace the liquid with something more brutal, I find myself confused and breaking a sweat.

Stella wasn't like this. She was purer and did not catch the monsters of emotion and force them to wither in the freezing cold and burn in the summer heat. Stella Summit was sweeter, delicate, and the Capitol was probably expecting something similar just because we share a surname. But this one word, these six letters are the only things that bound us together.

The bond was weak. Like a smile of a person who is becoming their own victim, like a bullet made out of tissue, like a boy.

I suppose that is what separates the two of us. She was broken by the games, and I can take the tension and strain. Stella was a lover and I am a hater, she was an angel in her hell and I am a devil in my heaven. Perhaps all that she needed was courage. Ten or twenty seconds of insanity rushing around her body like tomorrow didn't exist, and it would feel embarrassing, sure, but something great would come of it.

Sacha throws a sling around my neck and I can't help but connect the dots and see Stella's weakness in his eyes.

He's shaking, but there's nothing I can do to help.

"D-don't kill anyone today, okay?" Final adjustments are made to the sling made of his sweater. "Don't hurt your arm any more." 

"Thanks." I am thankful for his companionship. Something great might come as a result of this, and that something might just be survival.

When Stella's storm came and the addiction began, we cut and burned down the family tree, scattering the ashes in a wasteland. We had to reason to question her departure because we watched her fall from grace just like everyone else did. It tugged at our heartstrings—tugging became striking and plucking and our hearts were played like harps.

It was beautiful but I was not fooled.

"I can't control it, Sacha." There's already blood on my hands and I want more. "How dangerous." I say, looking up to the darkening skies. "How dangerous to have someone to lose." 

Because we have each other now, and that has value.

Perhaps the Capitol see an elegance in the two of us. Simple Sacha and the rebellious Ryan; we aren't the typical duo. I had collected kisses in the training centre and on the rooftop and when my lips met with Sacha's, it ached.

It burned and it ached. Stella had cared for Sue Tate and it timeless but bent beyond breaking point; I wouldn't let myself experience the same pain they forced themselves into. No, I told myself that I wouldn't let myself because love is pain and pain is weakness.

Ryanna Summit is not weak.

I stole a kiss from Sacha and it was a sacrifice. Sacrifices are fundamental because giving away parts of yourself which don't matter to achieve the greater good is a fine deal. I am a girl who has come to only know handshakes in alleyways and deals with demons, and so I see an imperfect perfection in this loss.

We kissed and it hurt; I sigh. A lifetime of peace and glory is worth a moment of pain.

"I feel dangerous, Sacha, and I'm telling you because I don't want to scare you." A warning. My mind flashes with the faces of Seven's fallen and my hand clenches into a fist. "I have to kill people and I just want you to be ready for that." I think he already knows it. "You can be scared of what I do, but you shouldn't be scared of who I am."

coding : elegant